


illicit affairs

by zigostia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Cheating, Infidelity, M/M, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:46:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25489465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zigostia/pseuds/zigostia
Summary: And that's the thing about illicit affairsAnd clandestine meetings and longing stares
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 9
Kudos: 29





	illicit affairs

**Author's Note:**

> Title, summary, and quote are taken from the song illicit affairs in Taylor Swift's new album, folklore. This is rather different from what I usually write (no happy ending?!) but I liked it too much to let it go unposted. I hope you enjoy it! Stay safe and best wishes <33

He’s cut his hair.

“You’ve cut your hair,” Sherlock says. His voice is quiet; restrained. Subtle. 

John ducks, shy, and ruffles a hand through his shortened hair. His fingers are thick and strong, calloused from years of wielding a weapon, and it sends a jolt of something electrical down Sherlock’s spine, followed instantaneously with a heavy flash of something sharp and flaying when the egg yolk glow of the streetlamp catches on the gold of his wedding ring.

“Would’ve reckoned you’d notice,” he mutters. Amused, or trying to be. It’s dark, and it’s too far away to see his expression, but his shoulders are squared-off and stoic and his stance is wide. Confident, or trying to be.

“So,” he continues. Clears his throat. Sherlock shuts his eyes briefly, imagines pressing a palm to the centre of his chest, right in between his ribs, to feel his diaphragm vibrate with his voice under warm, warm skin.

How’s Mary, he wants to ask. Has she said anything. Has she noticed. 

Instead, he remains silent and allows John to scrabble for fleeting words that evaporate like steam in the past-midnight air. 

“You, ah—” Clears his throat again. A quip about an offer of cough drops drift up to Sherlock’s throat, into his mouth, and he swallows it down. Perhaps he would’ve said it, before. But not now. Before, he would’ve been able to categorize his reaction down to the flutter of lashes. John would’ve huffed, rolled his eyes, quirk of a smile. Now, he could stiffen, he could snark, he could stammer and realize what he was doing and turn right around and leave.

Things are different now. John is—strange. Unpredictable. Sherlock feels as if he’s walking on eggshells these days. Things have been knocked off-kilter, unbalanced. A third person has been inserted into this equation strictly meant for two.

Sherlock doesn’t like cheaters. He really doesn’t. Cases involving infidelity more often than not concludes with a sour, stilted comment and a sharp, unforgiving tongue. Why bother, he thinks. Why bother.

But it’s John.

(The first time it happened, when Sherlock was about to leave with a smile and a wave and leave it all behind and John had called out,  _ Wait,  _ with the pitter-patter of footsteps and grabbing the lapels of his coat and spinning him around and smashing his lips against his, desperate clutch of his fingers on his hair, Sherlock had thought, he couldn’t—he couldn’t—he couldn’t—but it was John. And he crumpled.)

“You’ve been alright lately?” John flounders, comes up with.

Sherlock smiles. Tries to. It feels like a clumsy puppetmaster’s tug on the corner of his mouth. “I’ve been fine,” he lies. He played the violin for three hours yesterday. He paced the carpet until Ms. Hudson got on the couch and banged on the ceiling. He made four cups of a tea in a row, successively, and scalded his tongue on all of them.

“Good,” John says. “That’s good.”

He’s staring at Sherlock’s mouth again.

“And what about you?” Sherlock responds. He doesn’t really mean it. He knows exactly how John’s been, from the way his collar is rumpled to the way his eyes droop with exhaustion at the edges. He wants to say, Stop talking. We know what you’re here for. Conversation falls like a tower of cards, none of them aces.

John grimaces. Doesn’t even bother to hide it.

“Work’s been busy,” he lies. “Things are busy. I’m okay, though. We’re, ah—we’re just fine.”

Fine, Sherlock thinks. “Fine,” he says, and walks towards John without hesitation, letting his eyes show his intent.

And John crumples. He breaks two strides away, the steely edge in his stance fading into something raw. He meets Sherlock halfway, hands already in his hair, pressure points along his skull, soothing away the headache that’s been steadily pounding away at him for the past few days without fail, without surrender. Nothing else seems to fix it, and Sherlock wants to scream at him, Look what you’ve done. Look at this godforsaken mess that you’ve made me. But John’s mouth is on his, and his words dissolve in the desperate curl of tongue and the soft, stifled noises he makes.

Sherlock went to a bar two days ago. He doesn’t know why. He hates bars. John liked them. There was some bright-eyed boy sitting there, fresh out of college and he’d looked at Sherlock like he hung the moon. He tried to kiss Sherlock in the parking lot outside and Sherlock had punched him. He apologized, after. He hadn’t meant to do that.

(No, I’m sorry, the boy had said, pink-faced and bloody-nosed. You’re not—

_ No, I am. _

Oh. There’s someone else, then?)

“Jesus,” John muttered, his voice gone low and harsh and grating like brimstone. “Goddamnit. Sherlock, goddamnit. You—I can’t—”

He tries to pull away by a millimetre and Sherlock pulls him back in. He’s an awful person. He knows that already. John doesn’t deserve this, he thinks. Neither of them do. They’re both awful. They’re perfect for each other.

The first morning after, John had held his head in his hands and rocked back and forth on the bed they slept in together in the shitty two-star motel room, and Sherlock watched from one feet away, his chest aching in a way he hadn’t thought was possible—scoffed at in Hallmark movies they used to watch together on the telly on long, sleepless nights before—it felt as if somebody was taking a vegetable peeler and slowly, meticulously, flaying him into neat little strips. He’s gotten good at getting used to it.

I can’t do this, John had said, and Sherlock had said, Okay. That’s okay. They were okay. And it wasn’t going to happen again. If not for John, but for Sherlock, because back then he still had a shred of rationality left and he could see where this was going, what the two of them would become—twisted in a way that went down to the bone. Most of all, he could see where it would leave him. Hats pulled down and heads ducked low, hands shoved in pockets in shady parking lots on a foggy Wednesday at four AM. Smelling the scent of Mary still on John’s shirt.

But John’s hands have trailed lower, are tugging his carefully-tucked dress shirt out of his belt, warm, warm fingers dancing along his waist, and Sherlock grits his teeth and closes his eyes against the fresh scrape of pain down his heart (such a strange mechanism, and so much more awful than he’d ever thought it could be), but he kisses John harder and traces his hand down his spine, because it’s John, it’s John, it’s John.

I can’t do this, John says, the seventh morning after.

Okay, Sherlock says. That’s okay. It’s okay. It wasn’t going to happen again.

John takes the lie and swallows it like a pill.

Sherlock goes back to the flat and plays the violin until his fingers bleed.

  
  


> _ And you know damn well _
> 
> _ For you, I would ruin myself _
> 
> _ A million little times _


End file.
